7 Programmes Suggested to Check Population Growth in India

Some of the Programmes Suggested to Check Population Growth in India are: 1. Incentives vs. Disincentives, 2. Division into Zones and Regions, 3. Searching for New Contraceptives, 4. Increase in Marriage Age, 5. Educating Females, 6. Economic Development, 7. Role of NGOs.

The continuing population explosion in our country calls for some soul searching. The government is aware of the magnitude of the problem and considers the alarming population growth as the biggest challenge facing the nation as well as the government. But the 1976-77 experience of the government in adopting serious measures to achieve the set targets in the field of family planning has made all the following governments very cau­tious. There is, however, still time to act.

The following programmes may be suggested to check population growth:

1. Incentives vs. Disincentives:

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Some of the incentives required to induce couples to adhere to a two-child family norm have been identified as: cash awards, promotion/increment in pay and special allowances, extension of retirement age, educational al­lowance for two children, preferential treatment in housing loans, purchase of transport, etc., and free medical treatment/reimbursement of medical expenses up to two children.

The denial of these incentives to those who transgress the two-child family norm would amount to disin­centives. An important question has now been raised by some thinkers pertaining to population policy—that of cooperation vs. coercion, or in­centives vs. disincentives, or Kerala model vs. Chinese model?

There are some thinkers who support cooperation while there are others who sup­port coercion. An Indian professor (Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate now settled in the USA) in a prestigious JRD Tata Memorial Lecture in Delhi in August 1995 on ‘Population Stabilization Programme’ favored ‘coop­eration’ approach and denounced the use of ‘coercion’ to bring down the lines of two famous theories of Condorcet (of France) and Malthus (of Britain).

He supported Condorcet’s approach to the problem of popula­tion which talked of the emergence of new norms of small family size based on ‘the progress of reason’. Condorcet believed that female educa­tion would lead people to choose voluntarily smaller families and lower fertility rates. Malthus, however, was sceptical about this view of ‘volun­tary acceptance of family planning’. In his opinion ‘positive checks’ such as economic penury or rise in mortality rate would eventually coerce peo­ple to reduce, population growth rate.

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Sen described Condorcet’s path of cooperation as unequivocally right and Malthus’ path of coercion as unde­sirable and even counter-productive in checking population growth. He gave the example of Kerala in support of his viewpoint (same argument is given also in his book India: Economic Development and Social Opportu­nity and developed a hypothesis called ‘Kerala hypothesis of demographic transition’).

In this hypothesis, increases in literacy and better primary health care are described as two important factors in population control. But while supporting his hypothesis, Sen it seems, has ignored some figures pertaining to Kerala. During 1941-1971, there was an in­crease in the literacy rate in Kerala yet the population growth rate (PGR) also increased during this period (from 2.08% to 2.3% per year). It was only in 1971-81 and 1981-91 decades that the state’s PGR registered a decline.

How can Kerala hypothesis, therefore, be accepted as valid? Yet another lacuna in Kerala hypothesis is that while according to the 1991 census report, Kerala’s total literacy was 94 per cent and female literacy was 90 per cent, yet in spite of this ‘near total literacy’, the population growth rate of Muslims (who constitute one-fourth of Kerala’s popula­tion) is as high as 2.3 per cent per year which is more than even the national PGR of 2.11 per cent per annum and almost double the PGR of Hindus in Kerala itself. Ignoring such facts only renders the hypothesis untenable.

Opposed to the ‘Kerala model’ is the ‘Chinese model’ of coercion in population control. Looking at the near catastrophic state of our popula­tion scenario, thinkers support this ‘coercive model’ as the only effective solution of the population problem. These thinkers also point out the vested political interests that are promoting population growth rates of various vote banks to the detriment of the nation.

Some thinkers, how­ever, talk of a combination of cooperation and coercion or incentives and disincentives to check India’s population growth, but the nature of disin­centives has not been identified so far. Would denying the ‘benefit of reservation’ to people with more than two children prove a disincentive? Can denying promotion or admission or voting right or right to contest election be disincentives? Will such denials not be the violations of funda­mental rights?

Laying down mechanisms to implement disincentives in the prevailing socio-political situation in India, particularly when thirteen to twenty political parties with different ideologies on ‘social justice and reservation issue’ join together to form a coalition government at the cen­tre, will not be easy.

2. Division into Zones and Regions:

A study conducted in February 1990 by two population experts of the Operation Research Group at Baroda has shown how the problem could be tackled. On the basis of the fertility pattern, they have divided the country’s 350 districts into 16 zones and four regions. They have identi­fied districts and zones which reflect the positive impact of family planning on fertility rates, the areas where fertility rates have remained low despite hardly any family planning efforts, and those regions which are the hard core areas where the maximum effort is needed.

The 1990 survey had pointed out that the areas of high fertility are Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan (birth rate varying between 34% and 37.7% in 1990 and between 32% and 35% in 1995). This region-wise approach is expected to help in correcting the lacuna in the implementation of the family planning programme.

3. Searching for New Contraceptives:

The search for a new, inexpensive, easy-to-use and harmless contraceptive has not met with dramatic success so far. Though pills have come to be ac­cepted in a big way and this method is catching on in Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, West Bengal, Gujarat and Orissa, it is necessary that In­dian herbs also be thoroughly investigated for their medicinal effects.

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Pursuing vigorous investigation of the health status and dietary habits of some of the tribals in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, among some of whom fertility rate is found to be extremely low, might provide the needed solution. It may be said that scientists and pharmaceutical compa­nies do not appear to be much interested to make a breakthrough in contraceptive technology.

We are still dependent very largely on con­doms and operative techniques when our need is non-invasive techniques like an anti-pregnancy vaccine or a pill, which do not impinge physically and psychologically upon the human anatomy.

4. Increase in Marriage Age:

There is a direct relationship between age of marriage, size of family and attitude towards family planning. A study in Kerala revealed that the av­erage age of marriage went up in mid-1970s. In 1969, the number of married women in the age group 15-19 years was 30 per cent whereas in 1974 it dropped to 14 per cent. For those in the 20-24 age group, the de­cline was from 73 per cent in 1969 to 56 per cent in 1974 (India Today, March 1-15, 1980).

Sociologically, this is an important reason for the dra­matic decline in birth rate in Kerala. Raising the marriage age is, thus, bound to reduce the family size in other states too. This calls for serious and whole-hearted efforts for creating the necessary public awareness.

5. Educating Females:

Education is the most important factor in reducing fertility rate. It has di­rect, indirect as well as joint effects. Direct effect is in changing attitudes and beliefs towards a small family.

Indirect effect is in following respects:

(i) It delays entry into marriage,

(ii) It facilitates acquisition of information, related to family planning,

J.C. Pant (IJPA, July-September, 1992, 333-340) studied 486 rural and urban families of Punjab from April 1985 to June 1986 to analyse rela­tionship between level of education and number of children in family. He found that in the case of illiterate women, the average number of children in rural, urban and total sample were 3.61, 3.30 and 3.52 respectively; in the case of women educated from first to eighth class were 2.27, 3.30 and 2.50 respectively; for women educated from ninth to eleventh class were 2.42, 2.48 and 2.45 respectively; for women educated from matric to inter­mediate class were 1.87, 1.53 and 1.63 respectively; and for women who were graduates were 1.57, 1.62 and 1.60 respectively {bid-. 338). This shows that fertility is inversely related to the levels of education, and that graduate and postgraduate women follow the small family norm.

6. Economic Development:

Economic development may prove to be the best contraceptive. We have to go for quick population control at any cost on sheer economic princi­ples of supply and demand. To balance any economic equation, we can either increase the supply which depends on both financial and material resources, or reduce the demand which depends on the number of people asking for varied services and commodities.

For example, on the supply side, in housing alone, an annual outlay of Rs.3, 000 crore would be re­quired to build three million houses for the 17 million people added to country’s population every year, assuming that we require only Rs. 10,000 to build one small house. But if we tackle the same problem from the demand side and prevent the annual addition of 17 million to the population through an effective population control strategy, the demand for three million houses or Rs. 3,000 crore required per year for con­structing the houses will disappear.

Thus, preventing the demand is as good as working for the supply. This is balancing the supply and demand at no cost. And it is the no-cost solution we are look­ing for. What applies to housing also holds good for education, jobs, transport and health sectors. Tackling each problem from the demand side will have an enormous pay off.

This approach has another important dimension, it we tackle the problem from the supply side, it will increase the demand per se in other sectors. For example, if we increase the number of houses, it would in­crease demand for cement, bricks, wood material and electrical goods. But if we approach the problem from the demand side and reduce the number of houses needed, the pressure in all sectors will be relieved. With 52 births every minute or about 17 million births every year, the demand for money and materials in sectors like education, transport and welfare, will so enormously increase that in ten years’ time the situation will have crossed the point of no return and incalculable and irretrievable damage will have been done to the country and its economy.

The declared core theme of the Third International Conference on Population and Development held at Cairo from 5-13 September, 1994 was linkage between population issues, economic growth and sustainable development. However, for six out of ten days, the Conference was bogged down on the question of the legitimacy and efficacy of ‘abortion’ as a tool of population control.

There was no discussion or debate on such vital issues as poverty eradication, illiteracy, employment, rural up­lift, or free market access to Third World exports. In the first two International Conferences on Population held in 1974 and 1984, it was ar­gued that large families were the result of poverty rather than the cause of it. The stress was, therefore, on eliminating poverty.

Eliminate poverty and you eliminate the need for large families. However, the Third Con­ference did not give much importance to this issue. The experience of the developed countries has been that higher family incomes and improved services meant that fewer children were born. They, therefore, suggest that Third World also should be allowed to follow the same path.

The Brand Report while commending an expanded family planning pro­gramme also noted that family planning programmes are effective only when they go hand in hand with economic and social progress. It is thus held that development alone will provide the most propitious environ­ment for stabilising the country’s population.

While the linkage between population and development is well taken, the nature or mode of ‘development’ has itself been a somewhat de­batable question. There are leading Third World analysts who contend that ‘development’ (through high technology, mass production, and in­duced consumerism) as projected by the affluent nations and sold to the Third World tends to aggravate the population problem.

Hence, to con­tinue to talk and apply this technology indicates how little people have thought about this problem. What this viewpoint implies is that modern technology generates largely profit-motivated elite in an industry which is concerned only with its own interests and is indifferent to the poverty and misery of workers.

The result is an economic and demographic sce­nario that is becoming explosive both at the top (due to growing wealth) and at the bottom (due to increasing poverty of the masses). Thus, the feeling is that population problem should not be viewed out of social con­text. Development which aims at distribution and equality alone can remove poverty and contain population growth.

7. Role of NGOs:

Success of any programme depends on its acceptance by people. Unless the community is fully involved in the programme and it considers it to be its own programme, it may not be possible to achieve the desired re­sults. This can be achieved in a better way by the non-government organisations as these have very intimate relations with people.

Their role in removing deep-rooted beliefs favouring large families and male chil­dren, improving female literacy, raising age at marriage of girls, essential new-born care, birth spacing, etc., can be very significant. Such organisa­tions not only have the capacity to reach the remote areas but their activities are cost-effective also. The Department of Family Welfare has launched several schemes in the last five to six years to ensure better par­ticipation of the NGOs in the family welfare programme.

Some of these schemes are:

(1) Helping NGOs to the extent of 90 per cent of the cost of the project on promotion of small family norm and population control schemes.

(2) Wide publicity of the government for informing voluntary organisations to come forward to undertake these schemes.

(3) Holding of a number of regional conferences in last four to five years to increase the involvement of the NGOs.

(4) Recognizing six larger organisations (in Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta, Chennai and Lucknow) as Mother Units for identifying small NGOs in their areas and giving them grants for ap­proval schemes.

(5) Setting up State Standing Committees on Voluntary Action set up under the chairmanship of the Family Welfare Secretary with power to sanction up to Rs. 10 lakh per project.

(6) Asking states to identify one institution in the NGO sector for the purpose of providing training to health workers.

(7) Arranging study tours for NGOs from states with poor community participation to better performing states.

The NGOs can perform the following functions:

(1) Make advice and services more easily accessible particularly in under-served areas;

(2) coor­dinate with hospitals and health guides;

(3) Train functionaries, particularly low-level functionaries;

(4) Help in continuous supply of con­traceptives;

(5) Provide follow-up services to the acceptors; and

(6) Contribute to making educational activities more effective.

Why the NGOs have not proved to be effective in family planning programme is due to following reasons:

(1) Many NGOs are not familiar with government grant-in-aid schemes.

(2) The application procedure for grants is very lengthy and cumbersome.

(3) NGOs working in small towns have low accessibility to granting agencies.